


Fortune and Men's Eyes

by LadyRoxie



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 11:35:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9383258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyRoxie/pseuds/LadyRoxie
Summary: Phryne Fisher is determined: her mark is for her, and her alone. Any nonsense about soulmates is nothing more than folly.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I am in awe of the works done so far in this challenge. This one was wobbly to write, but hopefully it hits its mark. (No pun indended. Or was there....) ;)

Young Phryne Fisher was the only girl she knew who was devastated when her mark appeared. She'd known it would; she'd never heard of a case when it hadn't. But the idea of being branded, defined in any way, troubled her so much she scrubbed her wrist raw when it finally took shape. 

Her mother's maid, a sycophantic young woman named Lila, squealed in delight when she caught a glimpse of the rose-hued image one morning at breakfast when Phryne reached for the honey. From then on, Phryne had gone to whatever lengths necessary to cover the mark – wearing long sleeves, thick cuffs, or even increasingly heavy powder to mask it. She knew it would darken with time, from fresh-scar pink, to red, and finally to the oxblood likeness she saw on her mother's wrist.

It wasn't that she minded having an Anima; in fact, she loved that the universe recognized her spirit, and found a parallel in the world of other living things. (She _had_ hoped hers might be a tiger or a leopard, but when it surfaced and was neither of these, she knew at once it was perfect.) But to have it be visible, to be able to be defined by it by anyone else, _that_ Phryne Fisher would not accept.

Couples married or parted based on their marks – compatible animals meant the union was strong; incompatible ones were cause for rethinking. A woman with a seal mark and a man with a dolphin were deemed a good match; a seal and scorpion, far less so. 

But as far as Phryne had seen, nothing good came of a soul mate; look at her parents. One might even say they'd been cursed, for all the good their marks had done them. 

“Darling,” crooned her mother one evening, as Phryne perched on her mother's bed, scowling at the tugs from the brush as her mother worked the snarls out of her thick black hair. “It's a precious thing! It will be what tells you all you need to know about the man you choose to devote yourself to. Look at your father and me – such different worlds, such different people, and yet I knew the first time we danced and I saw the mark on his wrist... It was destiny.”

Phryne had to hand it to the universe: her father's mark was an albatross, an irony that remained adamantly unspoken in the household by everyone except Aunt Prudence.

Her mother's mark was a tern, and though not identical (they very rarely were), the two felt compatible: sea birds, and ones who mated for life. 

“We knew we'd somehow be able to fly above all the troubles life threw our way,” her mother would say, and it was always enough to drive Phryne from the room, if not the house. More than once, she wanted to shout at her mother, _You should have known his own flights of fancy would be the worst of your troubles!_

(They weren't, of course.) 

So she never shouted (not at her mother) and she never shared her own mark. She vowed she would be the only one to know what creature marked her skin, and she would choose her life and her lovers herself, fate be damned.

She learned to lock her bedroom door when she slept, and covered the mark scrupulously when she was in company. Boyfriends asked – some out of curiosity, some with a deeper intent – and she spun elaborate stories of lies and half-truths: it was a dragon, a mermaid; she'd never been marked, or her mark had disappeared. Once, she found a dark ink that stained like blood, and would trace over the image, adding loops and scrawls, changing its shape, its features, its very nature. The truth of it was hers and hers alone to know.

*****

The filth and chaos of war made her defiant act of camouflage seem absurd almost immediately. The first day in her uniform, Phryne carefully wrapped a spare piece of gauze over her wrist, determined to keep up her practised deception. 

Three days later, her sleeves were stiff with blood instead of starch, and the bit of gauze had long since been used to hold the life inside a soldier no older than Phryne herself. 

The flash of red on her wrist was of no more interest in this world of mud, sweat, and guts than her name. She left that Phryne behind – the one who balked at four walls, laughed into the night, and shielded her heart from everyone. 

Now she was just a nurse. She was a warm body when a battlefield surgeon needed a second. She was a resourceful mind when none of the supplies she needed was handy, and she had to make do with a torn strip of her smock and the butt of a boy's own gun as a splint. And she was gentle hand on a cold, furrowed, very young brow, as she swore to him she was his mother, and he was safe, and loved, and she watched the life flow out of him.

 _Phryne_ was not there. Just a dark-haired woman, who grew stronger even as she grew thinner, and kinder as she grew wearier, and so the mark seemed unattached. It was, the few times she thought of it, scrubbing a rough cloth over her skin as she washed what dirt and blood she could off her arms, strangely liberating not having to hide it. Perhaps, she thought fleetingly, she might _become_ her Anima; her own soul having retreated in the face of so much horror. 

And then, as suddenly as it seemed to have begun (though not soon), the war was over, and she was free, with Paris was laid out before her like a feast. A lifetime ago, she had been a girl, plagued with guilt, haunted by ghosts. She wasn't be the daughter her parents had wanted; couldn't be the girl she was supposed to have been; wouldn't be the young woman they needed her to be now. So she'd gone and lost herself in nightmares and now she reborn.

And she was going to _live_. Every breath was heady with pleasure and joy, every day was a chance to crystallize her new-found determination to soar. Her body was whole and strong, and she ached with the beauty of using it. Her mark remained bare, plain for anyone to see, and she flaunted it, nearly daring her congregation of admirers to use it against her. It was hers and hers only, and she let it mean nothing to anyone else.

Until René. “ _Mon amour_ ,” he said, “ _My love, my heart, only mine, always mine._ ” She curved her hand over his hip, thrilling at the possibility that it was true. Maybe love was real, maybe _this_ was real. The thought was almost as arousing as he himself: that they could be joined, bound, madly in love; not because of their marks, but in spite of them. They were opposite – hers a bird, his a panther. Avian and feline, as fraught with danger as a relationship between two creatures could be, and it thrilled her. 

She told herself she hadn't noticed the tightening of his hand around her throat until she was breathless.

It was a lie. She'd felt each clench and grip until she was trapped, his razor-sharp claws forming a cage around her, pinning her wings painfully to her sides. But love had always meant pain: pain of loss, pain of constraint, pain of feeling yourself disappear.

His claws clashed over her head like swords, and when she felt them pierce her flesh, she decided what the war hadn't done she would not let this man do. She had not survived, only to let someone slash her soul. So she left. 

She went back to covering her mark, a concession to the girl she was, even by the woman she'd become. It was a way to keep herself whole, and to be wholly in charge of her own keeping. And she was lucky – she could afford to surround herself only with people who saw life as she did. She strengthened her wings, and built a life of adventure and travel and swore she had left the ballast of love and loss in the past. 

Until Foyle's looming release, when she flew home. 

**** 

Now, it seemed ages since she'd even thought of the deep red mark on the inside of her left wrist. Covering it had become second nature; more natural even than the swipe of scarlet she used on her lips. She smiled, remembering the anxiety of getting it wet when all she'd had to cover it was powder. Years of advances in makeup, and some very good connections in the theatre meant that she was now never without a simple cream that dried to a perfect match for her skin, and not even Dot was the wiser. 

Her companion had only asked about it once, and Phryne had answered her honestly. It was for herself and no one else. Dot had looked pained for a moment, her fingers absentmindedly tracing her own mark, the still-pink image of a spaniel a source of joy and pride. She knew she was stronger and braver for having it, and having seen a similar mark on her beloved Hugh's wrist; in his case, a big retriever. The knowledge that they were destined gave her strength to fight for them when she might have given up. 

But her mistress was different, and Dot trusted her. If she secretly hoped Miss Phryne would find a lasting love one day, a true soul mate, she knew well enough to keep it to herself. 

For her part, a lasting love was the very last thing Phryne wanted. She adored variety, thrilled at the curious pairings she made with her men. Always, she held the cards: since René, she had never once revealed her mark to a lover, and had never encountered a man who shielded his from her. Sometimes the matches were exciting (her bird with Lin's lion); sometimes they were laughable (Warwick Hamilton had implored her to unveil her wrist, so convinced was he that her mark would bear some resemblance to his own, a skink. She had twisted her lips in a coy smile as she'd twisted his nipple, and she'd kept her secret.) Most were merely interesting, and she enjoyed learning that little bit more about her lovers. And if any pushed her too forcefully to reveal herself, she never let them do it twice. 

If anyone in her circle thought it was odd that she kept her mark hidden, they didn't say. Mr. Butler (his dark owl neatly tucked away) would never mention it; and dear Hugh was more likely to faint with anxiety than follow through with so intimate a question. Only Mac, her own Scottish wildcat occasionally peeking out from beneath her starched cuff, knew Phryne's secret, and knew equally well her reason for keeping it. 

It wasn't until the night of Jack's unfortunate tirade in her parlour that Phryne realized she didn't know Jack's mark. It didn't surprise her, exactly; he was, after all, a man as fiercely private as she herself. Looking back, the only time she might have had a glimpse of it would have been on the beach at Queenscliff, and although she had to admit, his wrist was most definitely not where her attention had been drawn, she didn't recall noticing a mark of any kind on his arm. 

I wonder, she'd thought later, replaying the scene in her mind... Frustrated actor indeed. Perhaps she wasn't the only one with experience of the magic of grease paint. 

She and Jack occasionally spoke of a suspect's mark, weighing the possibility that it might tell them something more than they might know already. He was guarded, never intimating anything about his own, and never asking about hers. If he wondered, she knew he'd never ask. 

So it wasn't until he lay unconscious in her bed, stripped of his layers and his pomade, that she'd thought to look, and found herself for the first time in her life on the other side of the fence. For even then, his slim, police issue wristwatch hid his wrist from view. 

She'd had to smile. Perhaps she had met her match, at least when it came to persistence. 

“Alright, Jack Robinson, you win this round.” She couldn't bring herself to unstrap the band, somehow knowing that would unclothe him far more than she already had. His body was one thing; his soul was quite another. 

Days passed, and Phryne tried to forget her curiosity. “Why should it matter?” she thought. “I am who I am, and Jack is Jack. What image we have on our wrist changes nothing.” But she found herself thinking of it at odd moments, like when Lyle Compton's calloused hand swept a little roughly over her breast, and she caught sight once again of the wolf on his wrist, and wondered what another hand would feel like – look like – in its place. 

But it was when she saw Concetta stroke down the front of Jack's chest, seeming to speak to him without moving her lips as two families warred around them, that Phryne realized she couldn't quiet the questions in her mind. 

_What if I'm wrong? What if it means everything? What if he loves_ her? _What if I lose him?_

Here was a woman who cared for Jack, maybe even loved him, and could give him everything Phryne knew he wanted. What good was beauty and wit (and even love, though she didn't speak it), against the destiny of the soul?

What if (after a lifetime of rejecting it as folly and fatuity) she was about to have the thing she most cared for slip from her life because of something as ephemeral as fate?

She had seen Concetta's mark, umber where her own was wine, an elegantly curved doe. That night, Phryne dreamt of a thicket of thorns closing in on her, her own hand pulling the barbs closer, the silhouette of a stag standing beyond it, watching unmoving until he walked into the darkness.

She woke in a panic, her hands wound around imaginary bonds. Of course, she thought, it only fit. Noble, quiet, solemn. She closed her eyes and opened them again with a gasp against the image, perfectly formed, dark and clear, of the fine head, the deep chest, the regal antlers twining with the prominent veins on his inner wrist.

She didn't sleep again that night, and by the next, she had choked down her panic to a dull ache, and found herself rubbing at the paint on her own wrist, as if touching her mark would give her courage. 

She would let him go, of course, though she knew she was lying to herself at the notion that she had anything to do with it. If ever there was a soul as independent as hers, it belonged to Jack Robinson, and he would do as he needed to, Phryne Fisher be damned. She couldn't bring herself to be happy for them, but as she tucked her bare feet under her on the chair, her eyes wide with sadness, she couldn't bear them any grudge, either. 

She held her breath with trying to believe it. But the ache only deepened with every platitude she spun in her head, and her wrist was nearly worn raw. Somewhere, the small girl, ferociously determined to keep fate and love at bay, couldn't come up with anything more sophisticated than “ _Please make it not be so_ ”.

That's where she was when the parlour doors opened, Mr. Butler's face serene (and was that a flicker of delight?) announcing Inspector Robinson. Her first thought, even before the need to pull down the sleeve on her black lace chemise, was that he was here to say goodbye. It was something he would do; an honouring of what they'd had, and an acknowledgement of what he was choosing above it. But one look at his face, and she knew she'd been wrong. 

He had chosen her. 

Phryne tried clumsily to approximate the bewitching tone she usually brought to their banter, but even to her own ears, it fell flat. Yet Jack seemed as drawn in as ever, his lips twitching into a tiny grin as he tilted the bottle of wine towards her, his eyes sparkling with playfulness and joy.

Over the next few weeks, the spectre of their marks withdrew, and Phryne was tantalizingly swept up in the new confidence of Jack Robinson. His hand lingered longer as he helped her out of a car, his eyes lingered longer over their whiskey, and she delighted in it.

Then one sunny evening, her heart stuttered in her chest over nothing more than lemonade, when he pinned a little blue brooch to her scarf. Once again, she was lost for words, reaching and finding only the heart of the little girl she was, rather than the worldly traveller she'd become. 

She would never admit it, but something shifted in that instant, as if the world splintered apart like a broken mirror, then put itself back together in the next heartbeat, only brighter and clearer and wider than before. 

From then on it seemed, Jack matched her every move. They were level in the air, one flitting ahead for a little, then the other overtaking the first in leisurely, graceful swoops. She revelled in doing loops around him over an autopsy table with talk of illicit devices, then he rushed up from beneath her to promise an intimate session on a couch. She dove into a delicate feint, exposing her injured throat, daring him to react, and he matched her evenly, his eyes never leaving hers as he let his fingers trail across her skin. Together, they floated an empty ballroom as if the only two creatures in the world. 

There is always a moment, at the beginning of a flight, that is Phryne's very favourite. The aircraft seems to heave down for a bare moment before leaping into the air, the rumble of the tires on the ground and the weight of the earth shrugged off as if they were nothing more than scraps of silk. From then on, until the plane alights again, she can feel this weightlessness, the same feeling she gets whenever the plane dips and swells, or when a strong wind tosses it up and she wrestles it back down. It is the pure feeling of flying, the leaving of everything that binds. It is the same feeling she has when pleasure nearly overcomes her body in lovemaking, when she hasn't come but will, soon. It is the feeling of dancing with a partner who knows her body and soul, who lifts her even as they move together, who guides her even as he feels her lead. 

She's spent most of her life chasing that feeling, revelling in it when she finds it, and refining her chase to such a degree that she knows exactly how to reach that peak, with whom and where. This pursuit, like her mark, has been her domain entirely.

But nothing prepared her for Jack Robinson. Nothing prepared her to be overcome with the ecstasy  
of flight when simply meeting his eyes or feeling his hand on hers. She is disarmed, slowly and steadily, until a day in a dry and golden airfield, when the knot in her chest slips open because she sees his car approach. 

She hadn't thought of it, not until the words come tumbling from her mouth, and as easily as she speaks them she knows she wants him to come. His kiss tells her he will, and her head is overflowing with him all through the long weeks of flight. 

****

It's an awful London evening when he appears on her doorstep, tired, cold, and sodden from the rain, but all she sees is the way his eyes pull the corners of his lovely, wide mouth into an almost grin, and he drops his bags without so much as a hello. His arms lift her off the ground, and he carries her, laughing and dripping, down the hall to her boudoir.

Afterwards, both of them warm and tangled and nowhere near sated, they draw maps on each other's skin, finally feeling the benediction of each other's touch, and covering each other in whole worlds of kisses. 

Phryne trails her fingers down his arm, and feels the worn leather of his watch. He sees her eyes change, and softly furrows his brow. In a moment, he understands. He is quiet. 

Her fingers continue their gentle explorations, but leave the clasp alone.

“I don't show mine,” she murmurs.

“I know.”

“I did, once.... for a while. I decided.... I haven't. Even Dot.”

Jack rests his hand on the bare skin of her back, letting the warmth of it spread between her shoulder blades. She likes it, and pinches her shoulders back, as if flexing wings, before curving them forward.

“I would like you to see.”

“I would like to, Phryne, but it doesn't matter.”

She turns her head to look at him. He looks calm, and so familiar, and she smiles.

“Wait here.” She misses his hand when she climbs out from between the twisted sheets, padding naked into the bathroom.

He is right where she left him when she returns, and she'd feel silly at how happy that makes her except she loves him too much to mind.

She sits on the edge of the bed, a flannel dipped in cold cream in one hand. She reaches out with her other hand to touch the smattering of hair in the centre of his chest, not meeting his eyes.

“I didn't show it, because it can't matter. Whatever I have, whatever you have, we are so much more than that. Right?”

She didn't want to add the question (wouldn't have, at one point in time) but she knows the next moments are only going to be 'next' and not 'last' if Jack feels the same. 

He sits up and pulls her close.

“Phryne, my coming after you was not dependent on anything you're going to show me; it wasn't dependent on anything. I came because I needed to, and wanted to, and could. I came because of you, only you, and only me.”

He pauses before he continues. “If you show me, it's because I don't want you to have to hide anything. Not from me.”

Jack reaches around her, circling her with his arms, and begins to pull open the tiny buckle of his watch. She is holding her breath, the antlered silhouette from her dream looming in stark, white relief behind her eyes. But as Jack lets the watch fall away, the vision disappears.

There is no stag. A small, perfect swallow, dark and clean, hangs suspended in flight on the pulse of his wrist. 

And suddenly she is crying, a flood of tears coursing down her cheeks. He feels her tremble and for a moment, fears everything is lost, but then another thought arrives. 

He takes the flannel, fallen into her lap, and wordlessly asks her permission. Finding it in her eyes, he dabs the cream over the perfumed inside of her wrist, cradling her hand in his palm. He doesn't stop when his fingers begin to tremble, but then her other hand covers his, and together they draw the cloth over her skin. 

And in the instant before he sees the fine curved lines, the spread wings and trailing twin-feathered tail, he knows what he will see. 

****

Years later, they will still talk of it. 

Always when they are alone, always before, or after, they make love. She will run her fingers over his mark, tracing its lines though she knows them by heart. 

And he might lean in, and bring the heat of her inner wrist to his mouth, and lave soft, warm kisses on her mark until she is sure she herself is flying again.

“They aren't exactly the same, you know, Jack,” she will whisper. 

“No?” He'll answer, eyes closed, delighting in her skin.

“Oh no.” She will recline and pull his hand to her chest, turning it so his swallow is flush with her heart. “Oh no, they're very, very different. After all,” she gasps, his lips trailing lower, her body soaring higher... “Mine is facing left, darling. _Ohhh..._ So not the same at all.”

And when he hums his agreement, she will forget everything and soar.


End file.
